Converting an Existing Website: Removing Duplicate Meta Data

Hi,

I have searched the forum to see if this has come up before. If it has and I missed it I am sorry.

I'm fairly new to Ruby on Rails and have converted an existing site. To avoid annoying redirects and disrupting search engine results I updated the routes.rb file so that the old file name renders the correct rhtml file. For example, photos.html renders /photos.

It works but the problem is that Google Webmaster Tools sees duplicate meta data and titles for each page. I would really appreciate information on how to correct this. I have been trying to figure out how to get google to ignore .html files or treat them as duplicate data but have had no luck so far.

Thanks,

Christine

Christine Nyb wrote:

Hi,

I have searched the forum to see if this has come up before. If it has and I missed it I am sorry.

I'm fairly new to Ruby on Rails and have converted an existing site. To avoid annoying redirects and disrupting search engine results I updated the routes.rb file so that the old file name renders the correct rhtml file. For example, photos.html renders /photos.

It works but the problem is that Google Webmaster Tools sees duplicate meta data and titles for each page.

What's an example of what you're seeing, and how is it not what you want?

I would really appreciate information on how to correct this. I have been trying to figure out how to get google to ignore .html files or treat them as duplicate data but have had no luck so far.

This may be a Google Webmaster Tools question, not a Rails one.

But...you could set things up so that instead of photos.html routing to the same place as photos, it simply makes a 301 or 302 redirect. Presumably Google will then understand that the two URLs are the same page, though you should check their docs to make sure. And for human users, the browsing experience will be essentially the same as before.

Thanks,

Christine

Best,

Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:

What's an example of what you're seeing, and how is it not what you want?

It's just a message saying pages have duplicate title tags and meta data and that each page should be unique.

This may be a Google Webmaster Tools question, not a Rails one.

The only information I could find through that route was regarding multiple domains with duplicate information. I was just wondering if there was a way to handle it with rails.

Thanks for your suggestion. Right now it doesn't appear to be affecting search engine ranking. This is my site and it is not a commercial site so that's why I decided to convert it first as a test.

I do have one for a local business that needs to be converted. The rest are new sites and were published with ruby on rails.

Thanks,

Christine

Hi,

you could try putting a canonical tag into your view. Saying google that /photos is the same content as /photos.html.

Greets, Max.

you could try putting a canonical tag into your view. Saying google that /photos is the same content as /photos.html.

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Specify your canonical

Hi Max,

Thank you for your suggestion. I did come across this but thought it applied only to existing pages not preferred links. I will take a much closer look to see if this is a good option.

Take care,

Christine